Investigators seek Canadian aircraft jolt answers

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Investigators began assessing
passenger accounts and flight data on Friday to determine what
caused the violent jolting of an Air Canada flight that
resulted in 10 people being sent to hospital after the plane
was forced to make an unscheduled landing.

Air Canada said all passengers and crew from flight 190
that were injured as the plane plunged midair and rocked
severely above the Rocky Mountains early Thursday had been
released from three Calgary hospitals.

The airline and a spokesman at Canada's Transportation
Safety Board declined to speculate on the cause of the
incident.

Safety board investigators interviewed passengers in
Calgary, before the passengers went on to their designations on
other flights. Flight 190, with 83 passengers and five crew on
board, was en route to Toronto from Victoria, British Columbia,
when the incident occurred about 30 minutes into the journey.

Safety board staff are "assessing the occurrence and
they're drawing from expertise from across the country, by
telephone, by conference call," board spokesman John Cottreau
said.

"Once the assessment's done, they should have a better idea
of what's needed" for an investigation, he said.

In 2006-07, air investigations took an average of 516 days
to complete, according to the board's annual report.

The board has collected the flight data recorders, and they
were expected to arrive at its engineering branch in Ottawa on
Friday, Cottreau said.

In harrowing accounts, some passengers said the pilot of
the aircraft, an Airbus A319, announced after the plane bucked
in midair that he was flying the jet manually because the
autopilot system was not working.
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